Tip: All our bearings are now sized for exact cutting depth. Remember to allow for swelling of wood fibers from gluing, as well as for the thickness of the glue itself. Glued plastic binding will swell considerably as it absorbs the glue solvents. Wood bindings glued with wood glues that contain water will swell also. To minimize final scraping and sanding, we recommend installing a short length of binding on routed scrap wood first, to test the fit.

#1298 Standard Binding Router Bit Set
Bearings in the Standard set are for common binding thicknesses (listed below), and match our bindings, including Herringbone purfling. Flush bearing is for trimming glued bindings, and newly assembled guitar tops and backs.

Worth the money

As I couldn't find a similar product here in the Netherlands I decided to splash out and order this set from StewMac. It arrived only two weeks after ordering so not bad.A whopping 30 euros were added at delivery for taxes and handling at customs, but as StewMac mention this on their site this came as no surprise.I did a few test runs yesterday and things look promising (if you're an amateur like me I would certainly recommend doing a few test runs first!). One thing to keep in mind when ordering from outside the USA: I had to make a shank adapter to be able to use my router, which accepts (European) 6 and 8 mm router bits. A bit of metal tube did the trick in 5 minutes though (see picture; also testing the plastic binding and glue here).In the meantime I’ve finished the job and things went fine. Took less than a minute to do the top and no tear out at all.

Router Binding and Bearing kit: The perfect tool!

I received my package of the bearing kit about an hour ago. For years I have cut the binding ledge by hand and sweated it out. I finally decided to use a router and after some research bought this kit. After setting it up and making some test cuts I did my first instrument. In less than ten minutes I did top and back. They came out so well I just stood and admired the job for a good long while. The cuts were satin smooth and there was absolutely no tear out. In fact there is nothing to sand. The binding is ready to go. I am not in need of saving time but I am trying to make instruments as good as they can be. This is the perfect tool. Thanks S-Mc for this.

Great product - but practice first!

I'm relatively new to acoustic building and had read so many books and articles about how to cut binding channels, my head was spinning!

Some seem to prefer mounting the router from below a table and feeding the guitar up to the bit with shims for the back curve while others seem to recommend a wedge attached to the router plate. All very confusing and most options sounded less than ideal - so I came up with my own solution.

I made a new router plate from an off-cut of rosewood and epoxied a decorative surround from a Yale type lock around the hole. This provide a smooth ridge of just the right height that allows you to hold the router perpendicular to the guitar - regardless of the slope of the back.

This, used in conjunction with the StewMac router bit and bearings has given me brilliant and consistent results with only the most minor of touch-up sanding need after.

But I do recommend practicing on scrap first. Routing is a 'get it right first time' job!